Programming Note: CNN's Anderson Cooper will report live from Iraq this week on the country's historic election. His reports will air at 10 p.m. ET.

"We are living through a watershed moment in the story of freedom," Bush said.
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Bush: 'I am responsible' (5:47)

Potential election problems reported (1:37)

Examining insurgent strategy (2:30)

Much pre-war intelligence was wrong -- president accepts responsibility for this and also for reforming intelligence capabilities. But decision to remove Saddam Hussein remains the right one.

Far more Sunnis -- the minority favored by Saddam Hussein -- will take part in Thursday's election than voted in January.

Spread of freedom to Iraq and the Middle East requires confidence and persistence, but it will yield results.

Freedom in Iraq will inspire reformers from Damascus to Tehran, as the terrorists try to create their own empire from Spain to Indonesia.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- On the eve of Iraq's historic election, President Bush took responsibility Wednesday for "wrong" intelligence that led to the war, but he said removing Saddam Hussein was still necessary.

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said during his fourth and final speech before Thursday's vote for Iraq's parliament. "As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that.""My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision," the president said. "Saddam was a threat and the American people, and the world is better off because he is no longer in power." (Watch Bush accept responsibility for "fixing what went wrong" -- 5:47)

Bush spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Meanwhile, 48 percent of respondents to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they thought it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq, as opposed to 54 percent of those polled last month. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percent. Fifty percent said it was not a mistake, compared to 45 percent last month. The president's approval rating is 42 percent -- up 4 percent from November. (Full story)

A successful election in Iraq on Thursday to establish the nation's first permanent, democratically elected government would do much to bolster the theme of Bush's speeches: that his administration's war is working. (Watch Iraqis getting out the vote -- 2:00)

"We are living through a watershed moment in the story of freedom," Bush said. "Iraqis will go to the polls to choose a government that will be the only constitutional democracy in the Arab world. Yet we need to remember that these elections are also a vital part of a broader strategy in protecting the American people against the threat of terrorism." (Transcript)

Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania -- a usually hawkish Democrat who has called for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq -- criticized Bush's policy again after the address.

"We've got nation building by the U.S. military, and that's not a mission for the U.S. military," Murtha said. "I've said this over and over again: They're not good at nation building. You've given them a mission which they cannot carry out. They do the best they can, but they can't do it."

Before the speech, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said 41 Democratic senators had sent a letter to Bush "to show that we need to get things right in Iraq after these elections."

"The president has had a number of speeches -- three in number -- and he has still not focused on what needs to be done in convincing the American people and showing the American people what his plan is in Iraq," Reid said.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said the letter urges the Bush administration "to tell the leaders of all groups and political parties in Iraq that they need to make the compromises necessary to achieve the broad-based and sustainable political settlement that is necessary for defeating the insurgency."

"The president still has not stated how long his administration believes the (war) will take and how much it will cost in terms of funding and in terms of the commitment of American military and civilian personnel," Reed said.

In the poll, 49 percent of respondents said neither side is winning the war, 13 percent said the insurgents are winning and 36 percent said the United States is winning.

On Monday, speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the cradle of the U.S. Constitution, Bush compared Iraq's struggles with American history.

"It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration (of Independence) was extended to all Americans," Bush said. "It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq." (Transcript)

The president unexpectedly took questions from the audience, including one from a woman who asked Bush how many Iraqi "civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators" had been killed in the war.

"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," Bush said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan later said Bush was basing his statement on media reports, "not an official government estimate."

About 160,000 American troops are in Iraq. The Pentagon says it hopes to reduce the number to 138,000 by the summer and 100,000 by the end of 2006.

During his speech December 7, Bush said the United States has succeeded in helping Iraq improve its economy and infrastructure -- which he called the "battle after the battle."

"Over the course of this war, we have learned that winning the battle for Iraqi cities is only the first step," Bush said. "We also have to win the battle after the battle by helping Iraqis consolidate their gains and keep the terrorists from returning." (Transcript)

And during his first speech of the series, on November 30, Bush told students at the U.S. Naval Academy, "As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists." (Transcript)

Let me see if I can get this straight. The bad intelligence he used to go to war said Saddam was a threat. He said that intelligence was wrong, which it was. Then he said he made the right decision to got to war, because Saddam was a threat, even though the intelligence which said Saddam was a threat was wrong

So, Bush takes "responsibility" for going to war with bad intelligence, but still giving the impression that all of the intelligence was wrong. That is simply not true. Only half of the intelligence was "wrong", and that is the half he used to go to war.

If Bush really wanted to be honest, he would say, "I ignored the correct intelligence which said Saddam was not a threat, did not support al Qaeda, and was not attempting to buy uranium from Niger. That was a mistake. Instead I cherry picked only the wrong intelligence."

Basically, Bush is now telling us that he was going to invade Iraq no matter what the intelligence said?

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reminds me of a disgruntled former employee who returns to his old workplace and starts shooting to avenge his perceived mistreatment.

In a new book by Ron Suskind and in a series of interviews, O'Neill charges that President Bush planned to topple Saddam Hussein almost from Bush's first day in office. The White House denies it and says it followed the same policy of regime change in Iraq embraced by the Clinton administration.

What you see depends on where you stand. O'Neill's intention was to cause harm to an administration that gave him a unique opportunity. He squandered that opportunity by opposing his boss' policies. O'Neill's economic policies have been proved wrong and the claims about Iraq will be proved incorrect as well.

In his book, "Against All Enemies," Clarke wrote that the current president "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."

Clarke told 60 minutes that immediately after the attacks on Sept. 11, the administration wanted to retaliate against Iraq.

"Well, (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq. And — and we all said, 'But no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.' And Rumsfeld said, "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

Clarke says he told the president there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, but that apparently wasn't what Mr. Bush wanted to hear.

"He came back at me and said 'Iraq. Saddam. Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way — I mean, that we should come back with that answer," Clarke said.

Clarke's claims echoed those of another former administration official, one-time treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who claimed Mr. Bush's first national security council meeting discussed overthrowing Saddam was discussed.

Cheney said of Clarke's assertions, "I fundamentally disagree with his assessment both of recent history, but also in terms of how to deal with the problem" of global terrorism.

The White House took issue with a conversation Clarke reported he and several other aides had with Bush in the White House Situation Room on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the terror attacks.

"See if Saddam did this," Bush is quoted by Clarke as saying.

McClellan said Bush "doesn't have any recollection" of such a meeting or conversation.

Furthermore, McClellan said, "there's no record of the president being in the Situation Room on that day that ... you know, when the president is in the Situation Room, we keep track of that."

Here is more of the Bush administration lying about Richard Clarke's accusation.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Mr. Clarke's accusations are not based on inside knowledge. Mr. Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh that Mr. Clarke "wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff."

Miss Rice, who spoke on several TV shows yesterday, said Mr. Bush quickly decided to "put Iraq aside" after it was determined that it had no direct link to the terrorist attacks.

Well, Bush has now vindicated Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke. This admission exposes the lies told by the Bush administration in denying the charges leveled by those two men, and it shows that the right-wing pundits who trashed the integrity of O'Neill and Clarke were woefully wrong.

Will anyone be held accountable for the lies and slander against these two whistleblowers?

but I have a question... why are we rebuilding Iraq and snubbing the rebuilding New Orleans?

Bush visits hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP) — President Bush traveled to a still-ravaged Gulf Coast Thursday after three months away, promising that a building boom is on its way and encouraging other Americans to visit, too.

President Bush speaks at St. Stanislaus College in Waveland, Miss., on Wednesday.
By Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images

Bush's visit to New Orleans and Mississippi was part of a series of events to showcase his priorities leading up to the State of the Union address. He said he was committed to rebuilding communities devastated from Hurricane Katrina. (Video: Bush meets with execs)

"People in far away places like Washington, D.C., still hear you and care about you," Bush told survivors gathered at St. Stanislaus College, just a couple of blocks from where Katrina blew ashore.

Bush's route to the college took him down a coastal road past thousands of snapped trees, debris still hanging from limbs and lots emptied of their buildings. There were almost no intact structures — in most cases only concrete foundations were left — and little evidence of rebuilding.

"There's no homes to repair," Bush said. "It's just been flattened. That's what the people of America have got to understand."

Unlike in New Orleans, where most of the population has not returned, the road was lined with dozens of onlookers. Many held signs pleading for help and pledging their determination to rebuild their communities.

Bush recalled his vow from New Orleans' Jackson Square to return the region to its glory.

"I said we're not just going to cope, we're going to overcome," he said. "I meant what I said."

Earlier on a brief stop in New Orleans, Bush said the improvement since his last visit in mid-October is dramatic.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," he said. "It's a heck of a place to bring your family. It's a great place to find some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun.

"And for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans," said Bush, seated before a colorful mural depicting jazz musicians, a river boat, masked Mardi Gras revelers and crawfish.

The president spoke to reporters before meeting privately with small business owners and local government officials in the New Orleans visitors bureau, located in the Lower Garden District neighborhood that was not flooded. The area suffered little impact from the storm, and his motorcade passed stately homes with very little damage. (Related: New Orleans residents express anger)

Bush praised the city's success in bringing much of its infrastructure back — if not most of its citizens and businesses. He ignored a question about what he thought of the city's rebuilding plan, unveiled Wednesday to residents angry about a suggested four-month moratorium on new building permits in heavily flooded areas.

Many New Orleans neighborhoods are still abandoned wastelands, with uninhabitable homes, no working street lights and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage. The levee system is as vulnerable as ever. Barely a quarter of the 400,000 people who fled have come back, demographers estimate.

Bush said the federal government has made $85 billion available so far to hurricane recovery, $25 billion of which has been spent. He said that is "good help so far," and said much of the work will have to be driven by the private sector.

He rapped Congress for diverting $1.4 billion of the levee rebuilding money to non-New Orleans-related projects. "Congress needs to restore that $1.4 billion," he said.

Before returning to Washington Thursday night, Bush planned to attend a $4 million fundraiser at the sprawling oceanfront estate of Dwight Schar in Palm Beach, Fla. The money was going to the GOP and several congressional candidates.

Schar is CEO of NVR Homes, a major home builder and mortgage banking company, and co-owner of the Washington Redskins football team. He raised more than $200,000 for Bush's re-election campaign.

_________________I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom. George W. BushDESTROY THE QURAN OR BE DESTROYED BY IT

We all have to remember that Bucky was born without a brain, just some cotton candy someone stuffed in there to replace the grey matter.

When it comes to Bush and Facts there is a juxtapositon here that has revealed the man as a liar trying to hide behind truths. His party is scrambling to cover for him, but Bucky will go on believing that Bush is gOD and spew out this kind of media propaganda, while humming his favorite song- "If I Only had a brain."

This is real people talking here Not some racist bigoted elitist neophite plutocrat hiding behind his desk in WASH.DiCk.

Quote:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/13/152250

We look at the the ongoing struggles around rebuilding New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. We speak with Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans and Tracie Washington, an attorney representing a number of evacuees in New Orleans who are staying in hotels and are facing eviction. [includes rush transcript] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------We focus on New Orleans and the ongoing struggles around rebuilding the city after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. On a visit to the devastated city for the first time in three months, President Bush said Thursday "I will tell you the contrast between when I was last here and today is pretty dramatic.

Earlier this week, Bring Back New Orleans, the city's rebuilding commission, unveiled the first of seven reports that are part of a sweeping re-development plan for the city. The committee's proposal was presented at a meeting on Wednesday with hundreds of residents in attendance. Most of the residents responded to the proposal with anger and frustration when they heard that it would give neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city four months to a year to prove that they should not be bulldozed.Under the proposal, residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods would not be permitted to move back for at least four months. During that time, leaders of each neighborhood would have to submit a recovery plan that would have to be approved before residents would be allowed to come back. Neighborhoods that are not able to come up with a plan or that do not attract enough development within a year, would be bull-dozed. The proposal was put together by the commission's urban planning committee, which is headed by the multi-millionaire real estate developer Joseph Canizaro.

Also this week, a deal was reached to stall many evictions of evacuees staying in hotels throughout the city. In the last few weeks, a number of New Orleans Hotels had notified evacuees that they would soon be evicted to make way for tourists who had booked rooms during the Mardi Gras celebration at the end of February. About 15,000 of the displaced are staying in hotel rooms in Louisiana - most of them are located in New Orleans.

Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League. He was also Mayor of New Orleans from 1994 to 2002. Tracie Washington, attorney focusing on civil rights law, education and labor/employment law. She is currently representing a number of evacuees in New Orleans who are staying in hotels and are facing eviction.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------AMY GOODMAN: Well, President Bush was in New Orleans yesterday. You were in New Orleans this week. Can you talk about the situation?

MARC MORIAL: Well, I think the recovery is slow. It hasn't made the kind of progress that I think most people expected. While the areas of the city that were modestly hit or not affected at all by Katrina appear to be back to normal, underneath you have universities that are closed and schools that are closed and businesses that are closed, and that affects not only the areas that were dramatically affected, but the areas that were not affected.

Secondly, I spent time last week in New Orleans on Friday before the New Orleans City Council with the other two former mayors who are living, Moon Landrieu and Sidney Barthelemy, along with a number of regional political leaders, emphasizing, in a show of unity, the need for the federal government to make a commitment to a first class category five flood protection and levy system.

Then, on Saturday, I went out to New Orleans East, one of the areas devastated, spoke to about 1,000 people at Saint Maria Goretti Church, where people are having services, and there's no electricity. There’s no carpet or flooring. It’s a concrete floor, but people's resolve -- I say all of this to say that the plan that was proposed and released the day before yesterday is just awful. It doesn't do justice or respect to the idea that everyone ought to have an equal right to return.

It's a plan that redlines neighborhoods and, behind it, creates an all-powerful redevelopment authority that would use eminent domain to come in and basically gobble up two-thirds of the city for some sort of redevelopment initiative. This is not the kind of plan that that commission should have proposed. It's not the type of plan that's designed to sort of bring together the kind of support the city needs. And I don't think it's the kind of plan that fundamentally respects the fact that many, many people have lost virtually everything. And their home, their equity in the home, their neighborhoods, their communities, their churches is all they've got. And this plan erects barriers between them and their return to the areas that they call home.

So, from my standpoint, from a standpoint of the National Urban League, and as a son of the city, we think any plan ought to be evaluated based on what we call the Katrina Bill of Rights. It's at our website at at NUL.org. It talks about the right to rebuild and the right to return and that everyone ought to have that right and ought to have a right to participate in the decision making.

It seems as though the commission, according to what many people in New Orleans sense, seem to be a small – fundamentally, the decisions were made by a small group of wealthy real estate-oriented types, some of whom I have great respect for, but whose perspective is not broad and whose perspective is not inclusive, so this is an issue for the nation, because we now have a great American city, a great region, southern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, fighting for survival, and I believe that a great nation which has built – rebuilt Kosovo and in the process of spending a lot of money to rebuild Baghdad, rebuilt Europe after the war and rebuilt Japan after that war, ought to have an unyielding and unequivocal commitment to do the absolute right thing to help its own citizens rebuild their lives, rebuild their neighborhoods and rebuild their communities.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in terms of how reconstruction is going in areas in, like, southern Mississippi, as well. You know, the coast areas, there have been all kinds of questions about luxury homes being built on coastal areas, on lowlands there. Is the reconstruction there going differently than what's happening in New Orleans?

MARC MORIAL: I've not been to southern Mississippi in a bit. From what I understand, they have more progress there. The governor there and the leaders there have moved quickly. Now, they've got a different set of issues, because to a great extent in southern Mississippi, the devastation was total. So they're dealing with complete communities that were flattened. So they have no alternative except to build buildings from scratch. In New Orleans, you have buildings that are still standing but substantially destroyed.

AMY GOODMAN: Might it also have something to do with Louisiana's run by Democrats, and Mississippi, well, the governor's the former head, Haley Barbour, of the Republican National Committee, a major force in the Republican Party in terms who have gets funding.

MARC MORIAL: I don't have an opinion on that, quite frankly, but I do think that one thing that's clear from the recent supplemental appropriations bill is that Mississippi has benefited from the fact that Senator Thad Cochran is Chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and that fact alone puts him in a position to kind of have the final word on any supplemental, and a powerful bargaining chip, not only with his colleagues, but on behalf of the people of Mississippi. Louisiana, on the other hand, at this point in time doesn't have a similarly situated member of Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Marc Morial, who is President of the National Urban League and is the former Mayor of New Orleans. We're also joined by the telephone from New Orleans by Tracie Washington. She is an attorney who focuses on civil rights law and has been doing lot of legwork over the last weeks, as she goes from hotel to hotel to try to prevent the evictions of evacuees for tourists coming in for Mardi Gras. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tracie Washington.

TRACIE WASHINGTON: Thank you so much.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what's happening and how the court has responded?

TRACIE WASHINGTON: Well, I'll talk a little bit about what's happening with the hotels, but I think it needs to be taken in light of a big picture in what's going on with the city, and I think Mayor Morial addressed a lot of that. What's going on with the hotels is that when FEMA made the decision to allow Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita evacuees to stay in hotels, what was not planned for adequately is what was going to happen when that hotel stay time was terminated. There is no binding contract between FEMA and the hotel operators to retain these evacuees for any given period. They are basically at will in the hotels, according to FEMA's agreement, if you want to call it that, with the hotel operators. Unfortunately, because FEMA has vacillated and changed its position so often concerning when it will stop supplements to these hotels, the evacuees have been stuck between a rock and a hard place, not knowing from week to week, every two weeks from every two weeks, when they will be forced to leave.

When, on Saturday, we learned – last Saturday, we learned that several evacuees were being evicted from a hotel on St. Charles Avenue, namely because, in some instances, the hotel didn't know whether the evacuees' rooms were still going to be paid for, and also because the hotel sits right on St. Charles Avenue, where the parade routes go, and therefore had been booking rooms for Carnival tourists. Those evacuees were turned out. They were standing on St. Charles Avenue, in many cases with garbage bags filled with their things, while the hotel operator was throwing out mattresses, furniture, and things of that nature.

What I did, along with Bill Quigley, a professor at Loyola University School of Law, is go to court on Saturday, find a judge and seek a restraining order against the hotel from evicting these evacuees. Our position at that time was that -- is that these individuals have been living in these hotels, in many instances, since October and have been treating these hotels just as they would any apartment complex. They were tenants. The hotels have served as landlords, highly compensated landlords, and because there's no self-help eviction in Louisiana and New Orleans Parish, these hotel operators should have been forced to go to court and give some due process to these residents, prior to simply turning them out onto the streets.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And about how many people are still in hotels, who were dislocated as a result of the hurricane?

TRACIE WASHINGTON: It's my understanding from FEMA's numbers, there are approximately 26,000 rooms that FEMA is paying for nationwide, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 to 10,000 in Louisiana. There is one hotel chain operator, Decatur Hotels, which we have worked with, that has been housing upwards of 1,800 rooms of evacuees. Fortunately, we were able to work an agreement with that hotel chain, which owns about 22 hotels. And the hotel operators were gravely concerned about notice from FEMA and having a date certain when the supplements from FEMA to these hotels was going to end.

You know, we can put the bad guy hat on the hotels in many instances, but in most cases, when you look big picture, again it's FEMA that's dropped the ball, because it has changed course so many times, and I hate to say, our state and local government here, in its failure to plan adequately concerning where trailers are going to be placed in the City of New Orleans, if, indeed, FEMA has 30,000 trailers ready to be placed in New Orleans, the back and forth bickering amongst politicians here concerning where those trailers will be placed in Orleans Parish is absolutely absurd. These folks need to have a place to stay.

Our mayor invited, begged, pleaded with evacuees all over the country to return home to rebuild, and when folks get home, they can't rebuild in their neighborhoods. That’s part of our bulldozing lawsuits, because the mayor had made the decision, without notice, to bulldoze their properties in some areas of town, Lower Ninth Ward, and then there are no apartments and no trailers where they can reside after the supplements have ended.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to just play a clip for a moment of an Alabama Congress member, Arthur Davis, who was here in New York on Sunday talking about the aftermath of Katrina at the Reverend Jesse Jackson Wall Street Project event that was held, raising the issue of, well, the right of New Orleans residents who are not in New Orleans right now to vote. Let's take a listen and watch.

REP. ARTHUR DAVIS: It is impossible to have a conversation about New Orleans's future, about Louisiana's future, in my opinion, without making sure that political participation is ensured on part of people who have been displaced. That's why we've introduced a bill that would give displaced voters from Louisiana the same absentee ballot voter protection that our soldiers have right now. Right now, if you're a soldier and you're in Germany or you’re in Japan or you’re in Afghanistan or Iraq, you're allowed to vote absentee. Therefore, your political right back home is preserved. We have to do no less for the evacuees because of this reality.

I remember before we left the press conference upstairs, where there were a number of people who were there, who were displaced citizens, and all of us hear the frustration every time we talk to them. Reverend Jackson, the main frustration I hear is, no one is factoring our voices into the equation. All of these people are sitting on the high side of the mountain talking about: Do we rebuild? Should we rebuild? What do we rebuild? They're not asking the folk who live there. They’re the one set of people excluded from the conversation. So that's the first step. We need to pass a bill giving that right to vote absentee ballot at the federal and state level to people who have been displaced.

AMY GOODMAN: That is Congress member from Alabama, Arthur Davis. Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League and former Mayor of New Orleans, your response?

MARC MORIAL: Congressman Davis is right. He's been on this issue from the very beginning. He's been a great ally and a powerful advocate of protecting voting rights, and the right to vote being one of the Katrina Bill of Rights and one of the rights embodied in the Katrina Bill of Rights that the National Urban League released in October at a presentation I made at Georgetown University. A great nation, once again, which can ensure that Americans living abroad, soldiers living abroad, can, in fact, vote in presidential elections, can certainly ensure that New Orleanians and Louisianians and Mississippians that are living 200, 300 miles away can vote in both local -- and that's important, because there are local elections upcoming this spring -- state and federal elections. And I think the elections officials in Louisiana, the Justice Department, have to weigh in to ensure this, or this is going to be a black eye on the United States of America.

People, while they may be living now in Houston, Dallas or Atlanta, they're citizens of New Orleans. They are not living there voluntarily. They're living there involuntarily, because of, you know, the situation which has occurred. And I really think Tracie Washington and Bill Quigley deserve a great deal of credit for protecting, working to protect their rights. One thing I would agree with Tracie on, when you look at the situation on housing with hotels and trailers, here is a classic case of there not being a coherent transition plan by FEMA and others to ensure that people have a way to transition from one type of housing, a shelter, maybe a hotel, to a trailer or a temporary place to locate. It's got to be adequate, careful planning to ensure that people's rights are protected.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What about the role of the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, in terms of their using the weight of their offices around these issues? You're critical of the redevelopment plan, but the mayor obviously had a major role in that commission.

MARC MORIAL: And I've tried to not make my comments oriented towards this politician or that politician, this leader or that leader, because I don't want anyone to interpret my thinking or our views as being political. Having said that, clearly it's a joint responsibility of local leaders, state leaders and federal leaders to do what is necessary to get this right. And all of us in the civil rights community, other members of Congress, we are going to hold officials accountable on behalf of the people, because as I visited New Orleans, many, many people want us to play that role. They want to know that people on a national level -- and what you're doing here on Democracy Now! by continuing to keep a spotlight on this is very, very important.

And here's really sort of the baseline point for me. 9/11 was a great tragedy, occurred in New York City. The response by the nation was swift, rapid, and unequivocal, in terms of money, in terms of resources, in terms of organization. That's got to be the standard by which the Katrina response is measured. And in our Katrina Bill of Rights, we lay that out. That's the standard. This ought to be no less. It ought to not be different because it's Louisiana, because it's Mississippi, because it's the South, because the ethnic characters of the communities may be a little bit different, because they may be poorer. That's the standard by which this ought to be judged.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Although, as a resident of New York, I would warn you against using that New York standard, because four years later, we still have a hole in the ground right where ground zero is.

MARC MORIAL: That's true. You haven't rebuilt. That’s true.

JUAN GONZALEZ: There's been no rebuilding, after four years, of the major -- of the epicenter of the attack.

MARC MORIAL: That’s true. That is true.

In New Orleans there is a concerted effort by the rich and powerful to remove the clored element from the city ad carpetbagger real estate agents are the ones pushing the agenda, by forcing their standards and reconstruction options on the poorer pepole of New Orleans. Busha nd company aren't interested in the plight of the common people, they ate only interested on pushing their class war on them. This is a conflict of classes and not a conflict of the elements any longer. If something isn't done to change things for the people then they may have a hole for 4 years or more just like Juan Gonzales said. At the very least Bush will push his agenda and bulldoze the memories of these poor homeless people right out of New Orleans memory. What does the average American bucky type care when they're sheltered in their little life of comfort. Until it comes home to them, they will never get it- and when it does, it will be too late.

This whole thing is politically motivated as well. Imagine ,because the Governor is a DemocratANd a woman that they aare doing this to Louisiana. As if Katrina was HER fault and the poor people there are HER problem. What a load of crap. The Repukelicans hat colored people and wish them removed from New Orleans, because less than 3% of blacks agree and vote for Bush and hgis bigoted party. they can see through the hype and lies that the Repiglicans represent as a white bigoted racist group of lying thieves out to cheat them of their rights and property,and spread them out over the nation.

From Bucky's cut and paste-

Quote:

"People in far away places like Washington, D.C., still hear you and care about you," Bush told survivors gathered at St. Stanislaus College, just a couple of blocks from where Katrina blew ashore.

Bush's route to the college took him down a coastal road past thousands of snapped trees, debris still hanging from limbs and lots emptied of their buildings. There were almost no intact structures — in most cases only concrete foundations were left — and little evidence of rebuilding.

"There's no homes to repair," Bush said. "It's just been flattened. That's what the people of America have got to understand." "It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," he said. "It's a heck of a place to bring your family. It's a great place to find some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun.

"And for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans," said Bush, seated before a colorful mural depicting jazz musicians, a river boat, masked Mardi Gras revelers and crawfish.

The president spoke to reporters before meeting privately with small business owners and local government officials in the New Orleans visitors bureau, located in the Lower Garden District neighborhood that was not flooded. The area suffered little impact from the storm, and his motorcade passed stately homes with very little damage. (Related: New Orleans residents express anger)

And the way those Blackies sing "De camptown racetrack" Brings tears to my eyes as I remember me an' Big Daddy George Sr. singin' along wid it, while I bounced on his knee in de ol' rockin' chair at Strom Thurmons plantation on de front steps. 'Sheut'.

Easy to say by the biased media and to a friendly audience when the facts are ignored. Again, Bush hiding behind lies while he pushes his agenda, Remember the beginning of the program stated-

Quote:

The proposal was put together by the commission's urban planning committee, which is headed by the multi-millionaire real estate developer Joseph Canizaro. ... the city's rebuilding commission, unveiled the first of seven reports that are part of a sweeping re-development plan for the city. The committee's proposal was presented at a meeting on Wednesday with hundreds of residents in attendance. Most of the residents responded to the proposal with anger and frustration when they heard that it would give neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city four months to a year to prove that they should not be bulldozed.

What a liar Bush is. He knows this is the real agenda and delivers more lies to the people via the lying media, then the braindead ones like Bucky grab on to this B.S. and spwew it out their overworked asshole lips like the tripe diarreah it is "No facts Bush, just lies" is his new monaker.

They can fix war torn Japan, Europe, Baghdad, but not New Orleans. Without eminent domain, I guess it ain't worth rebuilding an American city.

Speaking of lies, Bucky, respond to Shoeless's challenge and answer the Bush lies he proposed to you. After all the Pres. is only a liar and since you love to quote him so much, that makes you a bald faced gigantic fat ass in the air butt fucked liar too.

Oh and for all the joy this site gives you, donate to Jesse's fund.

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Bucky, you cowardly piece of dung. I showed you that former Bush adminstration employees Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke were totally correct, and right-wing pundits LIED about them, and you in all you ignorance ignored such information. Then, since you couldn't argue the point (which you never can) you totally changed the subject.

Once again you have proven that you and your neo-con, right-wing sect is full of shit.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has asked current and former White House aides and ex-CIA officials to respond to questions about an alleged scheme to create a bogus letter in late 2003 linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.

The book cites statements from former CIA associate deputy director of operations Rob Richer and John Maguire, the former chief of the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group/Near East Division, as indicating that the White House ordered the CIA to produce the bogus letter to retroactively justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.... In The Way of the World, Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not an immediate threat to the United States, despite spreading propaganda to the contrary to justify the invasion.

Suskind claims [Tahir Jalil] Habbush, Hussein’s director of the Iraqi intelligence service, had been turned by the U.S. government before the war and informed the White House “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

However, the Bush administration chose to ignore the information from Habbush and other Iraqi government sources – which was buttressed by the failure of UN weapons inspectors to find WMD at suspected sites. Instead, Bush proceeded with the war in March 2003....

The Suskind book sounds juicy. From a NY Times review, we read about what lead to the fake letter:

Quote:

...More startling are Suskind’s revelations about the Iraq war and the handling of prewar intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction. In one instance, Suskind says that denials by the foreign minister of Iraq, Naji Sabri, that his country possessed W.M.D. were simply rewritten — “almost certainly altered under pressure from Washington,” Suskind writes — into a false assertion that Sabri had substantiated suspicions about active Iraqi biological and nuclear programs.

Even more disturbing is the story of a former Iraqi intelligence chief named Tahir Jalil Habbush. Suskind describes in gripping detail secret meetings between Habbush and British intelligence in January and February of 2003. Habbush insisted that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his weapons programs but would not publicly admit it, so as to maintain a facade of deterrence against regional rivals like Iran. Not only did the White House dismiss Habbush’s statements, Suskind writes, but an irritated Bush even asked whether the Iraqi could be asked for “something we can use to help us make our case.” A subsequent $5 million C.I.A. payment to Habbush, disclosed by Suskind, has the smell of hush money.

Then comes what may be the ultimate bombshell: that the White House in­structed the C.I.A. to forge a letter, backdated to July 2001, stating that the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had trained in Iraq and, furthermore, that Iraq had received suspicious shipments (presumably of yellowcake) from Niger with Al Qaeda’s help. The letter was to be written and signed by Habbush on Iraqi government station­ery and addressed to Hussein himself. This preposterously convenient summary of what a perfect case for war might look like almost resembled some wry gag from The Onion. But at the end of 2003 the letter did, in fact, turn up in a British newspaper, before seeping into the American media. ...